Dance in a broad sense can be defined as "mindful movement"—a form of expressive movement characterized by a specific type of conscious awareness. This proposal reframes dance beyond rhythmic movement to music, including improvisation, pantomime, tai chi, and butoh. The authors ground this definition in predictive coding and procedural learning theory: mindful movement involves a suspension of automatization. When learning a motor skill, conscious awareness is high, but overlearning suppresses it. In mindful movement, this process is inverted, reactivating unconscious movement details in conscious awareness and enabling renewed aesthetic attention. This perspective suggests potential animal analogs of dance and opens experimental avenues.
Listening to music while entering a trance state activates specific brain regions. In a traditional South African healer, auditory cortex in both hemispheres showed increased BOLD signal during trance. Right parietal, right frontal, and area prostriata also correlated with trance perception. The orbitofrontal cortex, part of the Default Mode Network, showed reduced activation, especially when trance was high. This pattern suggests a neural signature for trance as a unique altered state of consciousness.